Need to pick your very knowledgable early bay brains please

[thejinx]

I also have uk bay which buy the time it's done will have cost me 7 grand in repair and body work costs. Nice to bring something back but wish I hadn't. I paid relatively little for the bus which made it worth my while. As others have said get it for less than 3 grand put 7 odd into it and you will have a nice bus. Don't expect to make money

 

[aogrady]

I also have uk bay which buy the time it's done will have cost me 7 grand in repair and body work costs. Nice to bring something back but wish I hadn't. I paid relatively little for the bus which made it worth my while. As others have said get it for less than 3 grand put 7 odd into it and you will have a nice bus. Don't expect to make money

Or buy a import and do that up. You could get a pretty much rust free one (aside from maybe battery tray and a little on the cab floor) for that money

And LHD is way cooler anyway..... ;-)

I bought mine 5 years ago, a import from California, originally a Washington DC bus but very dry and rust free, so must have not been too long in DC...

Yes i have spent out, but not that much (well, I had best not start to add it up anyway....) As for welding, in the 5 years since in the UK, it has had a battery tray, which all buses will need, and a little patch on the sill and rear corners, probabaly not helped by the fact it has only really had a proper underside treatment in the year... :msn4:

Horses for courses, if you are able to weld, and enjoy doing stuff up, then it's your project, and you can get a happy result at the end, if you can't weld and need to pay someone to do it, it's a long term money pit, probably over years bit by bit paying in instalements and when the restorer does a little here and there to keep costs down...

So compaired to a UK which will need the bottom 6" doing - while I'd rather spend money on the interior getting it how i want, rather than paying someone a fortune to weld, hack rot out etc - I'm out enjoying it, it's my daily, not my daily long term project. Have a look at my build thread, everything i have done has been documented

Just my opinion, for me, I wanted a bus that i could use right away without spending a fortune fixing rot, something we could enjoy from the off.

Good luck whatever you decide, it's a bus, that's the main thing!

Cheers,

Alistair

 

[BrotherNumberOne]

Part of the reason it's so difficult to give fixed quotes for work is that if you allow for a worse case scenario, you often scare the customer away.
They bring their van along with a couple of holes in the rear arch, outer sill and B pillar which doesn't look to bad, but you know in reality it's almost certainly going to need new inner, middle and outer sills, new jacking points, probably outriggers, probably the front top hat which is a pig of a job, repairs to the wheel housings and rebuild the B pillar. If you quote 1k or whatever, they'll often go and get it patched up for a couple of hundred quid elsewhere.

 

[geordie]

Would it's be fair to say Lefty hooker imports are easy street
In most cases!
So a right uk bay has got to be worth more

 

[monkeyvanwestybike]

Would it's be fair to say Lefty hooker imports are easy street
In most cases!
So a right uk bay has got to be worth more

yes indeed about 25 years ago! :msn4: